Anna Brewer

I am a British/Swedish artist who lives and works in London.
I see the earthy optimism of ancient folklore and today's digitally saturated, high speed techno soap opera as existing on the same cosmic delta. In my paintings, these elements combine and stories emerge - stories that honour the turning of the earth.

Through regular ritual and ceremony I explore a type of modern paganism as an energetic connection to the natural world and it’s cycles, to each other, to the past and to this very moment. Maintaining a steady flow of ritual and worship feeds into my sacred ritual of painting and is a way for me to honour the magic of the natural world at a time when we need to do this more than ever - especially now with the looming threat of the rise of the robots which we cannot ignore. 

My paintings include imagery of communal pagan rituals, earth festivals and symbols of folklore including recurring motifs such as animal masks, fire, forest, sky, animals, costume, dance and female figures. The oil paint I use to make the paintings are the earthy, natural mediums that invokes a pagan sensibility. Representations of the internet in my paintings manifest primarily through themes of appropriation as well as the use of generative AI tools and bleach. In the age of the internet we are constantly appropriating what we see there and it constantly appropriates us via our actions on it. It’s a continuous game of identity chasing and merging our selfhood with a parallel universe.